A manuscript with the first ever poem in English was discovered in Rome.

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have discovered in Rome an early 9th-century manuscript containing one of the oldest versions of the first known poem in English. This was reported by Science Daily on May 17.

The manuscript, kept in the National Central Library of Rome, contains "Caedmon's Hymn", a short work in Old English, created more than 1.3 thousand years ago. Scientists date the find to the period between 800-830, making it the third oldest surviving copy of this text in the world.

"In Rome, I came across contradictory information about the "History" of the Disaster: some pointed to its existence, others to the fact that it was lost. When its existence was confirmed by the library and the manuscript was digitized for us, we were extremely pleased to discover that the manuscript contained an Old English version of the Caedmon hymn and that it was embedded in the Latin text," said medieval manuscripts expert Dr. Elisabetta Magnanti.

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The peculiarity of the find is that in two earlier copies from Cambridge and St. Petersburg, the poem is written mainly in Latin, and the Old English lines were added later in the margins or at the end. In the Roman manuscript, the text in the vernacular is integrated directly into the main Latin array. According to the researchers, this proves that readers of the early Middle Ages attached great importance to Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Co-author of the study, Dr. Mark Faulkner, emphasized that about 3 million words in Old English have been preserved, but the vast majority of texts date back to the 10th and 11th centuries. According to him, the "Caedmon Anthem" is an almost unique monument of the 7th century, which connects with the earliest stages of the written English language.

On March 16, Popular Science magazine reported the discovery of a page from Archimedes' palimpsest at the Museum of Fine Arts in Blois, France. The sheet contains partially overlapped geometric diagrams and an excerpt from the treatise "On the Sphere and the Cylinder" with, for the most part, readable text. On the reverse side, there was a color image of the biblical prophet Daniel and two lions.